Good Evening Ladies and Gents, as it is late evening as I write this. I’m currently tossing around some ideas and questions that I currently can’t fully grasp and will be writing my thought process out in this blog post. Although I’ve read Eskelinen’s paper The Gaming Situation, I don’t really grasps his ideas. I understand the basic concept that narratives and gaming are different categories but his use of spatial functional relations and temporal manipulation send my brain through a loop. So let me get down to business to try and understand fully before the questions come tomorrow.
Ludology resembles narratology however the games themselves have actions and reactions the player must manipulate or configure to progress. Eskelinen states that the main thing is that any element can be a form of game element, and one element is enough for manipulation which differs from a narrative. He then goes on to explain different forms of relations and manipulation as well as the types they can be. There’s a lot of types and forms of interations that are harder to understand but is ultimately summed up that narratives need a story and discourse, games need events and users.
So Eskelinen is basically saying the necessary manipulation, properties, and its rules/goals is what sets games apart from narratives?
Game Studies 